How SpaceX Became the MyPillow of Government Contractors

It was really something to see Elon Musk turn SpaceX into the MyPillow of rocket companies, wasn’t it?

Jesus, I think I have to list all the depressing things about the past few months: the Trump rally, the creepy murder comments, the even creepier comments about impregnating Taylor Swift, spreading hurricane misinformation about ), claiming his own child was ‘killed’ by the ‘woke mind virus’, that sort of thing. I’ve seen a lot of people suggest that this is political radicalization, and yes, maybe it is. But I also notice that there is a sick business logic.

I have never accused Musk of being anything other than self-interested. The way I see it, his only real policy is: Elon Musk should be able to do whatever he wants forever. And his latest political outbursts seem to me to be clearly related to his money. He has come to the same conclusion as Donald Trump, namely that it is extremely easy to deceive Republican voters, and that there are many rewards and very few consequences. Donny, these men are nihilists.

At first glance, it may seem stupid for a businessman to alienate one of the major American political parties. Musk has a long history of taking grants from local, state and federal governments. His company SpaceX is built primarily on agency contracts in the heavily regulated aerospace industry. But I suspect Musk has discovered that he can use the culture wars to his advantage.

Those of you familiar with SpaceX may remember the litany of lawsuits against the government. For example, in 2005 the company alleged that Boeing and Lockheed Martin had engaged in anticompetitive conduct intended to prevent SpaceX from allowing its Falcon 9 to compete in government contracts. (The Falcon 9 wasn’t first launched until 2010.)

And in 2014, Musk sued the U.S. Air Force over an $11 billion contract awarded to the United Launch Alliance. (The Falcon Heavy wouldn’t make its first launch until 2018.) SpaceX won concessions and dropped the lawsuit after the Air Force agreed to accelerate its efforts to certify SpaceX to launch military satellites — and make more launches available for SpaceX to compete on. .

Now personally, as a woman who is familiar with the linear concept of time, I find these suits strange. How could SpaceX compete with a rocket it hadn’t launched yet? Sure, “indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity” contracts existed for the Falcon I, but that wasn’t what SpaceX was suing over. And yet these lawsuits gave Musk what he wanted: more potential government contracts. In fact, such suits have been as much a hallmark of SpaceX as its rockets.

If you’re the kind of person who uses lawsuits to get what you want, you may have taken note of the fact that Donald Trump has appointed 200 federal judges, including “almost as many powerful federal appeals court judges in four years as Barack Obama appointed in 2011.” eight,” as Pew Research puts it. In 2021, more than a quarter of active federal judges were Trump appointees. Let’s not pretend that that’s unimportant; if it were, the Federalist Society would not exist. If Musk supports the Republicans, they will continue to appoint judges who believe things that favor Musk – and he might even get lucky and get some blatantly partisan judges, who would support him because of his ties.

Take Texas, which has shown real interest in Musk’s business. During Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into Twitter bot numbers – an investigation that neatly aligned with Musk’s argument to get out of the social media company takeover . Of course, there’s also the Texas judge who owned Tesla stock and gave the green light to a Musk-backed lawsuit against Media Matters for America. (The judge in question is known for his politically conservative rulings.)

But wait! There’s more. In 2020, SpaceX received nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies from the FCC under Trump. But in 2022, the Biden-era FCC withdrew that funding because “the applicant had failed to meet its burden.” Two Republican FCC commissioners objected, and now a Republican House Oversight Committee chairman is investigating the FCC’s decision.

Culture war issues are intended to motivate a largely apathetic voter base that isn’t particularly concerned about government appropriations. They have historically been used by Republicans, beginning with Barry Goldwater, to enact specific financial policies that have largely harmed lower-class Americans. It seems like Musk has paid enough attention to this particular historical quirk to decide that the culture war can help him too.

Does this sound cynical? I suppose. Sincere, coherent political beliefs are largely the domain of the bourgeoisie and the nerds who paid attention in the government class. The Elon Musks of the world are interested in power. Not everything Musk says is necessarily calculated or politically beneficial — his partisan allegiances have also extended to cozying up to white nationalists and reposting theories that women are incapable of thinking. Crucially, however, there are no negative consequences for these actions – just more attention, which seems to be his personal heroin.

Consider the missile situation. For NASA, Musk is the only game in town besides Boeing, and he knows it. He also knows that even if he misbehaves publicly – smoking weed, for example – NASA won’t do anything punitive. And I blame the brain geniuses at NASA. Instead of having internal rockets to launch our spy satellites, we now have to rely on Boeing (lol, lmao), the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture that includes…Boeing) and SpaceX. (Sure, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin exists, I guess, but come on.) By outsourcing its engineering, NASA has left the national security apparatus at the whim of out-of-control contractors.

And Musk’s bet seems to be that being a visible Republican benefits him more than being neutral, presumably because he assumes, probably rightly, that Democrats won’t punish him for it. So when it comes to, say, SpaceX’s environmental damage, the safety performance of Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ and the working conditions for its employees, by joining the Republicans he can suggest that any investigation into his behavior is politically is motivated. Handy, right?

You can even see the ambition in the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. By pursuing justice, as he undoubtedly has, he has attempted to create a value proposition for a company he has largely destroyed. This lopsidedness also gives him an excuse: if X dies, Musk can claim it wasn’t because it was mismanaged, but because it was destroyed by the radical left or whatever. Thanks to his friendly judges, he can even take those ‘radical left’ critics to court!

See, Musk’s appearance at the Trump rally sparked a thousand thoughts and the crazy photo launched a thousand memes. But to talk about Musk’s political beliefs, you have to talk about the one thing he really believes in: money.